Time Warner's Puny Bandwidth Caps Break out of Texas

Bandwidth caps are the latest and greatest ways for ISPs to keep people in check, and while some ISPs do have admittedly sizeable caps (such as Comcast’s 250GB/month and AT&T’s slightly less impressive 150GB/month), Time Warner’s is a pathetic 40GB/month, and starting soon, those living in the Lone Star State won’t be the only ones subject to it.

Austin, San Antonio, Rochester, NY and Greensboro, NC will be the next cities that will have to deal with the diminutive bandwidth cap. And, a note to people in these locations, every gig you go over your cap, it’ll cost you a buck.

Now, that’s not to say that a buck all on its own is a big deal, but when you consider that downloading four conservatively sized HD movies, at 5GB a piece, takes up half of your monthly allotment, there’s something to ponder. And, if you enjoy the perks of HD video on Hulu and YouTube, there’s more to worry about. And gamers, if you like to buy your games on Steam, you’d better watch yourselves too! Those megabytes sure can add up quickly, and so can your bill.

Comments

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't Greensboro NC the town that had their own municipal ISP because Time Warner refused to service their area. Then Time Warner lobbied the state government to take it down for being "anti-competitive."

I'm so glad I'm using Qwest DSL.(I'm paying for their 7Mbps DSL..). Now that I think about it.. Comcast's 250GB cap doesn't seem so bad (although I still don't like it..) Time Warner Cable is thankfully not available in Portland, Oregon.

I say fuck'em. My isp imposed bandwidth caps without telling anyone. I found out , so I cancelled my service through them. As well as let all of my friends and neighbors know about it too. They all cancelled as well. Word of mouth about this caused subsequent loss of 3000 subscribers and climbing so far. Glad to be a thorn in their fat squishy asses.

The system is broken. No point in complaining about it. If you don't like it then be like me and don't use it any more. I'm switching over to either satellite or maybe pay a little extra on my cell phone bill to use their network. I know satellite has a better coverage area and any place you can use your phone you should get internet. With all the ways to get internet to your home you guys just need to bow out and find a new service. If you want to make a difference then make them pause and realize they are loosing customers to a different source. Competition is the greatest thing next to free stuff. The Broadband companies have gotten fat and need to loose weight. I say jump ship and goto companies that still offer unlimited.

If you have problems with a 20GB cap from the cable company, and think going to cellular is the answer, you are wrong. Most Cellphone Broadband plans have a cap of 5GB/month. Just FYI for anyone thinking about it.

The internet is like crack and Time Warner knows they have its customers by the balls especially in areas like mine with no other competition.

If you want to bring Time Warner to its knees you better be prepared to kick the habit for a while and stand up and be counted as one of its many pissed off customers. A good start is find out the addresses for advertisers for some of the bigger websites. Write them emails saying you'd love to see there ads and possibly buy their newest product but unfortunately you cant because of bandwidth restrictions. Play companies against each other.

Also, start cancelling Time Warner services you can live without. Quit buying Pay-Per-View movies, downgrade to basic cable, etc. Write emails to the CEO of Time Warner of your intentions and see it though.

You have to hit them where it hurts..their cashflow. If you dont stand up and be counted as a very pissed off Time Warner customer, don't come to forums whining and crying that your having to pay for your bandwidth overages.

Here in Saskatchewan, I have the option of Sasktel (truely unlimited as far as i can find), Access (go easy during peak hours, but do whatever you like during off-peak), and Shaw (caps varying by speed)

I'm SCREWED. I'm in Austin.. and I have Time Warner. Great. Well maybe I can convince my dad to get FIOS now.... haha just kidding. He would never. I am so pissed off now. 40 GB/s a month??? Freaking pathetic!

You know a few short years ago it was hard to imagine what 40gigs was. That was such a huge amount of data. 40 gigs is still alot but not as much as it once was. On my connection it would take me a couple days on non stop downloading to cap out.

I live in Canandaigua, NY, part of the Rochester area, and this is ridiculous. I thought internet was supposed to be unlimited. And what about the problems the economy is having right now. This is corporate greed. They get richer, and we get poorer.

Why is it so hard for cable companies to understand by upgrading to newer technology will benefit for all of us. I know they will loose some money in the process but you need to look on how it will benefit us on the long run. If companies are doing this to minimize "piracy", I could only say this aint helping at all, theirs better ways to face this act plus it shouldn't be a cable companie's problem trying to minimize "piracy".

I have to break this to you, JMG760, but, just like any other business, the cable companies are in business to make money. Providing a service is how they chose to do so, but in the end, the bottom line is what matter. Especially when they have stockholders to answer to. I'm not saying I like what Time Warner is doing (being one of their customers myself), but I do understand the tightrope they have to walk between pleasing the customer & pleasing the Board of Directors.

Personally, I agree that if the existing equipment they have is insufficient bandwidth for customer demand, they should upgrade and raise prices to offset the cost, if necessary. I don't have a problem with speed caps… you get what you pay for, but what I don't understand is caps on total data, especially in a day & age where internet content is becoming so much more data intensive. It must be my lack of networking knowledge, but I don't see how it costs Time Warner (or anyone else that uses data caps) anymore money whether I d/l 10MB of data per month or 10GB. And isn't there already a limit on how much I can d/l anyway with speed restrictions? A 7 mbps downstream can only send so much data in a period of time anyway, right?

Hmm… I think the Devil needs a new representative. I don't think I did so good a job for him.

"I know what I know because I have to know it, and if I don't have to know it, I don't tell me and I don't let anyone else tell me either."
Michael Garibaldi, Babylon 5, 2259

This has absolutely nothing to do with piracy. Their claim is that since the United States is so big, that upgrading their infrastructure would take a lot of time and money, which they've had time to do both. However, in order to keep broadband from being abused by the few they are implamenting a bandwidth cap on people. It is total bullshit because they've had years to plan, spend, and upgrade their infrastructures, but instead pocketed it and now we have to pay for it with high cost and low quanity of bandwidth in return from T.W. That's the game you play when you have greed mixed into the mix.

Greed is a constant. You have to accept it and plan for it if you're going to have a successful capitalist system. The problem is corruption and incompetence on the part of local, state and federal government officials. They are the ones that gave the telecom and cable companies huge tax breaks and were either stupid enough or corrupt enough to neglect to add any sort of real oversight or enforcement to those deals. So, naturally they take the money, promise whatever the government wants, and then laugh all the way to the bank because there's absolutely no penalty for not living up to their promises. They're liars and cheats and the government is no better.

I've got an old Linksys router WRT54GS that I loaded a third party firmware on (Tomato). It keeps track of bandwidth useage on a real time/daily/weekly/monthly basis. According to it, last month I used 162GB (roughly 76GB down, 86GB up). Which does beg another question. Is this cap just on downloads or downloads AND uploads?

Side note, I also use IP Traffic Monitor at http://www.skyward-soft.com to monitor what apps on my computers are using the internet. So, Tomato for overall bandwidth used (it doesn't tell you per device unfortunately) for all my components hooking up to the Internet (PC's, Xbox, HD-DVD player, Wii, etc) and IP Traffic Monitor to see what the PC's are doing.

I don't run IP Traffic Monitor all the time, just when I want to double check that nothing's sneaking behind my back (like a trojan or something). For example Veoh's Web Player (I didn't realize it was a P2P app).

They both use the available bandwidth, so I don't see why they wouldn't include both. I have the same router, and I'm running Tomato too, but I'd never really looked at my bandwidth usage. Looks like I used about 25GB up and down last month. Was kind of a light month for me though. I was gone for a week, and didn't download as much as usual either. I'm going to be downloading a bunch of MSDN ISOs this month once I get my new dev system set up, so that's going to be probably 10 to 15GB alone.

Only other choice I have here is AT&T. Their speeds are slower, but the cap is apparently almost 4 times as high as TW. It looks like I may have to switch because of this.

What about the folks who don't use anywhere near the 50, 100 or 250 gigs of data allowed? My Mom uses her computer to read a few emails, and check out a few comic strips online every day. She might use a gig per month, if it's a long month. That frees up a whole bunch of 1s and 0s for the rest of us, right? With America on the road to socialism in a handbasket, I would think that we ALL should be allowed the amount of data available, regardless of who uses it. If Mom only uses one gig, shouldn't I be allowed to use the other 249?

If it burns, burn it. If it doesn't burn, you don't have it hot enough.

The point for the IPSs is that they want to be able to tell you you get all this speed and all the cool things you can do, but then they also want to make sure you use as little of that bandwidth as possible because they've WAY oversold their bandwidth. They can't really provide everbody with all the promised bandwidth, so if we all use our connections to the fullest, then the system chokes and they start getting bitched out by their customers because speeds and latency suck.

So, the point is that they want to be able to actually provide much less than they promised and still make the full amount of money from everyone. Nice gig.

What about customers that are infected with spyware/bots/malware, etc.? Technically if Time Warner charged a customer for bandwith that was due to criminal activity, it means they are profiting from a crime. How about if a person has an unsecured wireless? It's too easy for abuse and I think large-scale expansion of this sort of thing will have extremely negative consequences.

They would most likely simply through in a clause that states that it is the users responsibility to maintain a secure network, and will be liable for the bandwidth use of spyware and the like.

Not saying its good or bad, but that right there would not be hard for their team of lawyers to put together.

Personally I download a few things, but I am still old fashioned (I'm only 16 - weird) in the fact that I prefer to have a hard copy of something. (I also have purchased everything in my possession, including music and the like, so I am not downloading 10gigs a day of pirated software)

I still say that if the cable companies want to play hardball, then let's play hardball. If they want to cap their usage--that is their legal right. However, legally speaking, I should be able to have root-level access to their servers to ensure that certain materials--ie, ads, junk email (much of which is with Time Warner's blessings)--all of it I should be able to 'disconnect' from prior to it using what I am rightfully paying for. TV is unlimited, in part because of the commercial ads.

If I'm footing the bill, then I get the absolute rule in monitoring what comes through my pipes. Eventually people will wonder why they are paying ad agencies for ads that no one can get thanks to Time Warner. Let them sue Time Warner over it. The federal (or state) governments don't care about the average American citizen, but when companies are losing money because of bad business practices by places like Time Warner? Yeah, the feds will get off their asses when it's about money. They don't care if YOU spend it, but they sure as hell will panic when no one is making anything because of this sort of thing.

The fact that ISPs are reverting back to bandwidth caps is just plain greed. Throughout history most services like this have imposed limits, but gradually gone to unlimited access (local and long distance phone plans come to mind) But when you start out selling unlimited service and then scale back because you realised you were missing out on a cash cow.... thats just shameful. Time warner said it themselves, they said they didn't realise how much revenue they were missing out on by not imposing bandwidth limits. Luckily, we live in a capitalist economy, and I think this will do nothing but spark innovation. When people finally start looking for an escape from their cable internet, other companies will see their chance to move in with newer technology.

The reason we don't have the most up to date internet and mobile technology is because of our countries sheer size. People are quick to point out how much further ahead japan and south korea are in technology. But you could fit both of those countries in texas with room to spare, and only 25% of those countries are populated, the rest is mountainous regions. Japan and south korea can rebuild their entire infrastructure for the same cost of the US rewiring a single mid sized state. So companies aren't going to take a financial leap to rewire the entire country unless they have to. So, here is to hoping that time warners inscrupulous business practices push new technology forward in the states.

As for the idiot talking about americans just taking it and the french revolting..... please. Americans are known for standing up for what they believe in. French are pacifists. Just take a look at history, you people thought you could apease hitler all the way up to the day when you saw german tanks rolling through your streets. So, go eat a croisant and leave technology decisioins to the countries that actually have something to do with them.

As my fellow Canadian pointed out,I too have a 60GB cap on 10mbps service on cable and I must say it was hard to get used to after having unlimited service for years on DSL, the first month I went over by double, at least they just throttle my service to 50kbps and I had to call customer service to get it turned back up to 10mbps. No one seems to offer unlimited service anymore in Canada, which is probably why there are no streaming video rental services in Canada. I think its mostly due to the fact that cable companies want you to use their video on demand services, which of course you have to pay extra for. So all these online video, game and music content providers better get off their butts and start to put pressure on all ISP's to stop capping bandwidth or face going out of business (the content providers). The way things are headed I think we'll be going to the store to buy our games, movies and to a lesser extent music for the forseable future.

In Canada bandwith caps of well under 100GB are common. i'm paying $40/month for a 7mbps connection and only get 60GB of bandwith. it's ridiculous to impose such a small limit. but my only option is to pay and extra $20/month to get 100GB/month. going over hurts too. i went over by 2GB this month so i'm going to have to pay $5 extra...

Because the US government full of capitalist pigs lets them. Why spend money upgrading when you can screw the customers you have a monopoly over? It's not like Americans have the balls to do anything about it. The French would riot and hold people hostage.Americans just bend over and take it. Over and over and over.

Technically there is no monopoly. You have plenty of options when it comes to high speed internet. They want you to think that they are the only thing you can get. I'm sure you see plenty of propaganda about your local cable company one your TV. You could google a few things like cell phone modems or satellite. Sure satellite is still not good enough for gaming but the wireless networks in most areas is better then the cable companies by far. You just have to spend a few bones on one of their USB modems and maybe pay a bit extra on your cell phone bill. That's what I'm doing and I have internet worthy of computer games and enthing else i want to play. There really are too many options out there to be shackeled to the cable companies. Look around locally for a wireless provider. If there's not one then you have a virgin market and you maywant to look into that.

Look at where the cable companies are now. They've filled all our minds with honey and lies. They are not the only ones out there. They're not growing they're dieing. They are latching on to the consumers to help them make it threw. They didn't plan ahead like any smart company would have. They need to shape up or get out of dodge and you need to show them that by useing a different service.

Because all of these companies that provide cable lack compition, sure theres Verizion, and Satelite but Cox doesnt serve Mass, but they do serve Rhode Island. Now why is that? there right next to each other, or better yet why doesnt Comcast which serves Mass cover Rhode Island?

They often have agreements or contracts with cities giving them exclusive rights for service in that area. This included giving them rights to lay their cable and place other equipment on private or state-owned property. Nobody else gets that access, so nobody can compete. So you end up with phone companies collaborating with satellite companies to "compete" against cable companies like TW or Comcast. Nobody else can really get into that market.

You guys think you have it bad try being signeed up with Comunicomm in OK.... They only have a 30GB cap on thier cable service. That really sucks if your in the IT field, that puny limit will be used in no time with all of the research you've got to do at the house. Not to mention the side jobs that I do for friends and coworkers. that 30GB cap is nothing when your doing PC repairs and all of the Windows updates and other software updates that are involved in the job. I think that these ISPs need to get thier collective heads out of thier assess and think about the problems that they're going to encounter with these artificial limits is about to create. If thier so worried about profits that much then maybee they should provide quality service to make up the huge lossess thier about to incurr over the artificial bandwidth caps....

I live in the Dallas Fort worth area and just gave a call to my service provider (Time Warner) I have their standard road runner and when I ask what is the deal witht he 40gb limit. The rep says they have no idea on the cap limit and I still have unlimited Download and upload. This is very confusing. I hope they don't randomly start charging extra without me knowing it.